Tullow Oil shares have surged nearly 24% in London after the company said its well off the coast of Ghana had hit a significant column of light oil, indicating its Jubilee field in the area is larger than earlier thought.
Tullow's shares are up 19% this afternoon on the ISEQ.
The company said that results of drilling, wireline logs and samples of reservoir fluid indicate that Jubilee is a single continuous stratigraphic trap extending at least 11km to the Hyedua-1 discovery well in the adjacent Deepwater Tano licence.
The Mahogany-2 is the first appraisal well on the Jubilee field. It was drilled to a total depth of 3,443 metres in water depths of 1,080 metres.
Tullow Oil will now begin a limited flow test on Mahogany-2 to determine potential production rates from the reservoirs and to collect further oil samples for analysis. Testing is expected to take about four weeks.
Three more Jubilee appraisal wells are planned for 2008.
Mahogany-2 lies in the West Cape Three Points licence. Tullow has a 22.9% interest in the licence, and is the unit operator of the Jubilee field.
